Difficult, a victory none the less

Olympiacos had a hard time against Kolossos Rhodes which they beat 75-67 for the 4th day of the Stoiximan.gr Basket League.

The Piraeus team began the game playing good in offense, but they had a lot of problems defense wise and the first quarter was tied 25-25. In the second quarter, the defense of the Greek Champions did not get any better and thus the Rhodes team took a 40-46 at 20'. The outlook of the game was the same into the third quarter. The 'reds' were gaining slight leads, but the guests had the answer for a tied 57-57 score at the end of the third quarter. However, in the fourth quarter, the quality of the Olympiacos players prevailed. The players of Giannis Sfairopoulos tightened their defense in the last five minutes, received mere four points during that time, found solutions in scoring and got the 75-67 victory.

THE POINTS
The quarters: 25-25, 40-46, 57-57, 75-67
Olympiacos (Sfairopoulos): Birch 2, Printezis 9, Papanikolaou 10 (1), Μantzaris 6 (2), Αthinaiou 5 (1), Green 18 (2), Young (2), Papapetrou 15 (3 3p., 7reb.), Agravanis, Hackett 3, Lojeski 5 (1).
Kolossos Rhodes (Lykogiannis): Reddic 11 (13ρ.), Chuku 5 (1), Releford 17 (3), Vassilopoulos 2, Hall 4, Georgalis 10 (2 3p., 7reb.), Aggelakos 3 (1), Ahonen 9 (1), Papadakis, Watson 6.

THE QUOTES
GIANNIS SFAIROPOULOS:  "It's a good win. Each victory is important. We are not happy with our performance. We were receiving easy points and we got stressed out when attacking. Our defense got better in the second quarter. We received a total of 21 points and we won although with difficulty. We hold on to the victory. We essentially did our job, but we need to change our mentality. If we are not properly prepared, we are going to be in trouble. I talked to the players and told them that some of them need to change their mentality. Congratulations to Kolossos for their performance and to the refs for winning the court. When you are not ready to play, it's only logical when the game gets tough to find it even harder to get into rhythm. The good thing is that our defense got better in the second half. We won the game through our defense. I will say it again. If you are not ready to play, you cannot cope with a marathon. It's our fault. I ask from my players to always give it all. I understand that they may off target but they should always be mentally prepared. I'm gonna say it even more frequently this year, because we have more games to play. I want everyone to be ready to give 100%. The team has 15 players and they need to ready at any time."

IOANNIS PAPAPETROU:  "We are only content about winning. There are no excuses. We weren't ready. Kolossos came here to play with everything they had. We received 46 points in the first half. We somehow improved our defense in the second half and we are now moving forward, the games are back to back".

ARIS LYKOGIANNIS: "It was a game quite different to the one we played last time we were here. We were not prepared then. Now, we had a whole week to prepare. We knew that Olympiacos would be tired. When we saw that Spanoulis wasn't playing, we knew we had to close the path to Olympiacos' creating. A decisive play was at 2'20'' before the end, when we made a wrong pass at fast break. We need to forget about this game and focus on the next one which is really important. There were moments when we were hasty. It's only a fact that given this season's Euroleague schedule, both Olympiacos and Panathinaikos are going to have rough nights. Players are human, they are not machines. The important thing for us is that we challenged a victory against Olympiacos on the road".  

PANAGIOTIS VASSILOPOULOS: "We were focused at the beginning of the game. We gave it all against Olympiacos that had a very difficult week before this game. We tried to win, we didn't make it though since we lost concentration at the end. However, we could have won. We need to remain grounded and focused for the next game".